Struggle Along

I have sat here a hundred times, looked out over this place, over this city, if you can call Honolulu a "city," it's really more of a town that outgrew itself and never quite caught up from the rush of the 1970's when tourists flocked here, when it was such an old way of life, the real "Hawaiian" way of life. And this city, this island has never really caught up with the rest of the states, always a step behind, always struggling to catch up. And here I sit once again, looking out over the balcony of my 11th floor balcony, over the famed strip of Kalakaua, the road that winds through the famous coastline of Waikiki, and I have to laugh at myself at home I ended up here, at how my life has taken this path.

This was never a place I wanted to be, never a place that I dreamed of going to, never a place that interested me at all really. But it was a place that happened to me by happen-stance and by coincidence and by whatever is meant to happen in my life. But I am realizing more and more everyday that my life is not that of normality, or of predictability. Every stage in my life, I never would have thought I would have ended up there, and I have never been able to look ahead and predict where I'll be in 2, 5, or 10 years. And the beautiful part is that I don't really want to. And while that drives me absolutely insane to not know what is going to happen, I love it too because it makes me enjoy the ride, it makes me find out more about myself and it makes me want to find out where I'll be next.

My life might change in a few weeks, or it might not, but either way, I have posed the difficult questions and I have gotten my answers to them. I can move on, with what I want my future to be. I can move on to the next thing and know that this step in the journey happened for a reason, that this step was needed for me to move forward. And whether or not I'm back in Portland in the new year, I'm doing okay, I'm making my way through the crises, through the uncomfortable and devastating moments, through the heat, through the uncertainty and I'm okay. And while I want so much in my life right now, I want to be working back home, I want to move forward in my relationship, I want to pass my LEED tests and trudge forward with my NCIDQ, I want to save money for a trip to Europe and Morocco and I want to pay off all my credit cards. I want all of that, but I know that it might not happen right away, it might not happen when I think it will, but that's okay, because I know it will all happen eventually and if I've learned anything in my 23 years, it's that life happens on it's own schedule, on its own timeframe and we are just here along for the ride, hoping to just make the best of it while we struggle along.